Maria das Nuvens.

Many years ago, while I was living in NYC , I chanced upon a hard-covered copy of an English  translation of Maria Nephele, by Greek poet Odysseus Elytis,  in a Barnes & Noble sales basket.   I grabbed it up,  took it home and, finding it both enigmatic and intriguing, swore to someday do an “update”, reshaping the 'antiphonist' as another   female interlocutor,  of a different generation.  I finally got started on it several years ago, all the while  uneasy about what seemed to me a very bold venture.   I spent hours, days  poring over whatever lit crit I could find on Elytis and on Maria Nephele, yet  his poem, which still enthralls me, seems only partly decipherable.    Writing my own  "Maria das Nuvens" has reaffirmed my feeling  that I  understand its spirit,  although many nuances lie in a cultural and historical terrain in which I am a mere novice.  Since I am not at all convinced that I will find a venue to publish it - my few initial attempts have failed - I have decided to make it available here, through a link posted below, at the end of this excerpt. As usual, it remains a 'work-in-progress'.  And as usual, I welcome comments and suggestions.  

maria das nuvens

 

In my dream, yes.  In a great sleep which will come sometime,

full of light and warmth and little stone stairsteps.

Embracing, the children will pass in the streets just as in old

Italian movies. From everywhere you’ll hear songs and see

huge women on small balconies watering their flowers.

 

 

Who listened?  Who ever listened? Judges, priests,

 gendarmes, which is your country?

 

Elytis, Maria Nephele.

                              

Maria das Nuvens

 

i saw it with my own eyes.

the red antelopes came bounding

out into the streets, then stopped.

raising slender necks, they stretched

to catch a scent on the wind, tenderly

pawing the piles of debris. two small

children slipped out of the paint-cracked building,

took hiding behind an old station wagon,

in blue metallic sheaves of rust. two pairs of

dark eyes opened in awe. they had learned

to be silent.  i found a scrap of paper,

wrote everything down.

 

 

Antiphonist

when we first met i warned you

of the perils of the world, of

what it was like to come

back from the fields strewn with stubs

of trees and limbs. how the wind

pummelled the coastal night after

the last burst of light tapered into

a strange starless blackness.

you stand there, in your

futile efforts to look the facts

in the brutal pupil of their eyes, you,

a stubborn girl, wedded to the need

to search for beauty even

where so little may be left. 

 

animals move by a scent on the wind, while

life and death hover, human constructs.

 

we ignore what we choose to: what

nobody knows, everyone knows.

 

 

Maria das Nuvens

i was compelled to keep searching.

there was a spot on the beach where

two strangers pressed lips to lips. we

too indulged in gentle danger. far now

from the village but still a sense of doom

stuck to us, like tatters clinging to

 war- hardened bodies. broken shells

gouged the soles of my bare feet. the

seagulls around me were tame, came

begging.

 

 

Antiphonist

 

days step in slowly

one after another

as if offering a bit more time

to chart some new course,

as humanity bobs up and down

in the waters it has sullied -

the rubble, the entrails, the pieces

of plastic and fragments of metal,

and the wounded creatures of

the sea...

(if you'd like to read the rest, kindly follow this link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s4efLgtrzH3pWEngssqQ4UZfCOAaq7bN/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116745013077065511932&rtpof=true&sd=true